Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi, on March 4, alleged that Robert Caldwell, who failed to finish his formal education and not even passed out from school, authored a fake book called, A Comparative Grammar of Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages.
Mr. Ravi, who presided over the 192nd birth anniversary of Ayya Vaikundar, a social reformer from Kanniyakumari district, said the British had a society called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and recruited school dropouts by providing basic training and sent them to India.
“People like Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope were sent to India. They started closing all the native schools, running here for a long time. Only missionaries were allowed to run the schools. They started targeting the people who were poor and marginalised, and, in this background, they started targeting the southern districts of Tamil Nadu,” claimed the Governor. He also released the book Sri Mahavishnu’s Avatharam- Sri Vaikundaswamy Aruliya Sanathana Varalaru (Tamil Version).
Mr. Ravi further said one of the tasks given to the East India Company was to evangelise India by changing their faith and bringing them to the Gospel.
“When the British government took over, to make their colonial empire endure, they started strategically destroying the Sanatan Dharma, which kept the society, which was immensely rich and diverse. They also targeted institutions that were owned by society, through policies,” he alleged.
The Governor said that on November 11, 1839, around 90,000 people signed a petition presented by Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty requesting the British not to destroy dharma, not to make baptism a compulsion for attending the school.
“When Sanatan Dharma was under acute existential threat, great saints like Ayya Vaikundar (1833) and Thiruvarutprakasa Vallalar (1824) appeared on this sacred land,” he said, adding that even today there were people who wanted to destroy Sanatan Dharma.
“They are the followers of those who collaborated with the British, mourned on August 15, 1947, our Independence Day, and observed it as a Black Day. Sanatan is where everything is inclusive. As all the other faiths are divisive, the world is looking forward to Sanatan Dharma.
Today, our country is awake and experiencing a comprehensive resurgence. We are all fortunate that we are living in this age, witnessing and participating, playing our role,” he further said.
